JAMESTOWN — This summer, the diamond at Jack Brown Stadium is a busy place for all ages including those who are still kids at heart.
“… The wins are great but being able to go out and still play a kids game … if we’re not 30 we’re getting there, I’m almost 32 and now I’m now one of the older guys and we’re just happy to be out there still playing baseball,” Jamestown Hounds captain Danny Fischer said. “… We don’t really get to see each other a whole lot during the winter months. We do try to get together during the holidays and reconnect but other than that we don’t see each other and being able to be down at the ballpark for a couple hours, you feel like you’re a kid again. We definitely feed off that when we play too.”
As of Tuesday, July 1, the Hounds are 4-4 overall with a win in the 2025 Rally in the Valley Classic tournament and a second place finish in the Josh Berg YBO Tournament.
“It’s one of those deals where May hits and we always go to the Enderlin tournament in the first week of June so once May hits guys are pretty excited, we get the group chat going again and see who’s around to go to Enderlin,” Fischer said. “…. It’s fun to get the guys together and play games. I think we’ve played eight or so games so far and again you don’t see these guys throughout the year … but for these three or so months so it’s good to see the guys again and go out and play some ball.”
While the win in the tournament in Valley City felt great, Fischer said being outside playing baseball meant more.
“Basically what it is now, the tournaments are fun to go to, you want to win them but you’re just focused on, ‘Hey we get to go out and play baseball,’” Fischer said. “Every time you show up, you’re just happy to be there, happy to get nine guys, it just so happened that weekend the ball bounced our way, we were able to beat Valley and then beat Dilworth on the Sunday of the tournament to win those two games and come out as the tournament champions.”
Fischer said some of the team’s consistent skills over the years include an ability to hit the baseball, defense and baseball IQ.
In the championship game of the Josh Berg tournament, the Hounds lost 1-0 to the hosts, the Enderlin Indies, despite a complete game from hurler Aaron Pugh. Fischer said the squad’s best players this season have been Pugh, Braxton Hewitt and Brian Rice.
Fischer said the Hounds became a team when he was a high school junior. Tom Gould put the team together when their legion season was over. As a result, the vast majority of the roster have been playing together for many years. Fischer said playing together for a decade helps the team on the field.
“It’s the best. … We started playing in amateur tournaments and then all of a sudden all of us guys, we go the college route and we’re playing college baseball and back then there weren’t as many summer leagues so we’d all come back in the summer.,” Fischer said. “We were like, ‘Should we keep this Hounds thing going?’ We ended up doing that, there’s been a core five, six, seven of us that have been playing together for over 10 years and there’s another five or six guys that have been playing for about five years. We really enjoy being around each other and that’s the biggest thing.”
This year’s Hounds team has four current college players — Grady Shipman and Connor Hoyt who play at Valley City State, Isaac Mitchell who plays at Bismarck State College and Mason Lunzman who is transferring to Dickinson State University from Bismarck State. Fischer said those college players do a lot for the team and playing baseball in the summer helps them prepare to play for their respective colleges in the fall.
“I think it helps with especially some of these teams we’ll play, it’ll be a little bit higher level arm, especially when we play against the Elks you have a lot of these Jamestown guys that’ll stay and it turns out a lot of them will be pitchers,” Hoyt said. “So being able to get at-bats against better arms and good arms that UJ has, I think it keeps me in that competitive mindset and keeps challenging me a little bit. … I think it’s really just getting in that mindset and getting that competitive mindset of battling through at-bats and keep looking for what I’m looking for and I think that’ll help me build into fall games coming up here.”
Hoyt said his season started slowly as he recovered from a torn right hamstring that he suffered in March, but he has found a way to pick up his production. While he hasn’t played for the Jamestown Elks yet, Hoyt said he will play for both teams this summer. Hoyt said he has played center field, left field and pitcher this season.
“It hasn’t been bad. It was a little slower start than I anticipated right away, just because it’s been a while since I’ve gotten some at-bats in since the injury, it took a little adjusting to get used to,” Hoyt said. “But right now, it’s finally starting to get in my groove again. So it’s going well now.”
The 14 other players on the Hounds also played a sport in college.
Fischer said he and the other veterans on the squad help the young guns with the mental aspect of the game, such as positioning and recognizing when a pitcher is tipping his pitches.
“Anytime they start to talk about baseball especially I always make sure to listen and soak it in like a sponge,” Hoyt said. “A great example is Grady Anderson, he’s been there a time or two so being able to pick his brain on offensive strategies and especially base running strategies, I think it helps a lot.”
When he looks ahead to the rest of the season, Fischer said his goals are pretty simple.
“I’ve said it before every time we get a chance to go play it’s such a fun thing,” Fischer said. “I would say as we get into July, the intensity seems to ratchet up a couple notches when we’re getting closer to that state tournament, especially once we get into late July, we try and get more games and really get locked in for that third weekend in August for the state tournament. The goal would be to give ourselves a chance at state again.”
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